


press x to prove your devotion

by grenadine



Category: Devolver Digital Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Zane is also here, the consequences of yesterday's unethical business practices today!, tomorrow's unethical business practices today!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grenadine/pseuds/grenadine
Summary: "What year is it?"Nina has questions. Margaret, as usual, has answers.
Relationships: Nina Struthers/Margaret Ludlow





	press x to prove your devotion

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is an episode tag for a marketing presentation. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> much love to [delgaserasca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca) for enabling this insanity. enjoy.

“Okay, first question, what year is it?” 

As Zane finishes the glass full of emergency whiskey from the flask that has somehow, blessedly, made its way into the pocket of his tracksuit, Nina, quiet since her awakening, speaks up. Before Margaret can answer her, some loud-ass hidden sirens start to go off in the part of the lab that Nina hadn’t inadvertently exploded when she woke up.

“Oh, oh, shit,” says Margaret, flying into startled movement. “Don must have found Linda. We should go.” 

Nina puts her hands on her hips. “Madge?”

Margaret, who for as long as Zane has known her has always been two seconds away from haring off in one direction or another like a very intelligent, extremely hyperactive slingshot pellet with multiple PhD’s, actually _stops_. She straightens up, and Zane can see her wishing for her pencil and clipboard.

“2020, ma’am.” Margaret says, clipped and professional, but shifting back and forth on her feet.

“2020?” Nina looks taken aback, then looks at Zane for confirmation. He nods, the sirens still wailing through the room. 

“2020. Ma’am,” he says, wilting slightly under Nina’s piercing gaze. 

Zane has never really met Nina before, not the real one, just the trapped facsimile repeating someone else’s words, full of manufactured bite behind dead, dead eyes. He’s seen her shadow rip someone’s throat out with one hand, but this Nina, the true Nina, is somehow even more intimidating than her doppelgänger ever was. His happiness at finding the woman alive and smiling was as much a reflection of Margaret’s obvious joy as it was at finally having pulled one over on Linda, wherever she was.

Fucking Linda.

The sirens get even fucking louder, somehow, and begin to be interspersed with intermittent gunfire. 

“Okay, setting aside the fact that it’s two years later than I thought it was, and also I don’t know exactly what the _fuck_ happened during those two years, but I think I might have fucking _died_ at one point, _Margaret_ ,” says Nina, “Uh, that? Sounds kinda bad.” 

“Yeah, um, we should go,” says Margaret, not meeting Nina’s eyes. “There’s a back exit over there.” Margaret slings a backpack over her shoulder and the three of them break into a quick jog. 

Zane has to help Margaret push open the concrete door at the back of the lab, and they duck into a long, darkened hallway, lined with steel plating. Margaret pulls a set of keys out of her backpack and locks the door behind them before they continue on. 

“Fucking shit, where even is this?” asks Nina, as they move along. “I thought I knew all the dumb shit research buildings we put up on the corporate campus, but this is-”

“An old cafeteria,” says Margaret. She has Nina by the sleeve, dragging her forward even as Nina tries to stop and gauge her surroundings. “Black book, repurposed before-” She swallows. “Before.”

“Oh, that’s what happened!” Zane says, oblivious to the sudden awkward silence. “When we got rid of the customer service department, we had a bunch of extra funds in a floating account. I figured it just went to exec bonuses.” 

“It _should have_ ,” mutters Nina. 

“But I rerouted some of it towards building maintenance, and then it just fell off the face of the fucking planet. Is this _bulletproof_?” 

“Yeah, well,” says Margaret, guiltily. “That’s what black book money can get you.” 

The door at the end of the hallway is also made of steel, with a complicated-looking biometric lock. Margaret has Nina look into the iris scanner and there’s a clicking sound, but the door doesn’t open. At the other end of the hall, there is shouting and loud hammering on the door leading back into the lab.

“It should be open.” Margaret says. “Why isn’t it open?”

“Hey, hey, let’s just-” Zane says, but is cut off by Margaret’s swearing:

“Shit. Shit. _Shit!_ ” She is clearly starting to panic. 

Nina puts a hand on her shoulder. “Here, let me try the optical thing again.” She pushes past Margaret to look into the scanner, placing her other hand on the door’s thick metal handle to brace herself. The door clicks again, but doesn’t budge. Zane watches Nina jiggle the door handle up and down, and then he watches her rip it clean off the door.

Nina goes very still. Margaret freezes, face white. The handle falls from Nina’s hand and lands on the floor with a heavy, metallic clank. When Zane bends down and picks it up, it weighs more than a brick.

“Well. That’s new.” Nina speaks under her breath, to herself, but Margaret flinches like she’s been struck. 

“Margaret,” says Nina, finally looking up. “Margaret, _what did you do_?” 

“I-”

At that moment, the door at the other end of the hallway bursts open, and a squad of security guards pours through, followed by an absolutely _furiously_ screaming Linda. Nina moves quickly, shouldering the now-broken door open and shoving the two others through. 

“Eat a dick, you ginger bitch!” she shouts, slamming the door shut, bullets pinging off the metal as she does.

They have ended up in the company parking garage, and Zane is relieved to see his green Range Rover unsullied. 

“Can we take yours?” Margaret asks him, while Nina continues to scream obscenities through the door. “I kinda, maybe, crashed my bike on the way over here a little bit.”

“What? Are you-”

“I’m fine. Mostly. Whatever. I had to get over here _somehow_ , and hey, turns out driving while dividing your consciousness between two dimensions is not a super good idea!”

“Imagine that.”

“Hey, where the fuck does Linda park? I’m gonna key her fucking Lambo with my fingernails.” says Nina, walking back to them and straightening out her ponytail. 

“Uh, maybe we could do that later?” suggests Zane. “I don’t think whoever the fuck Linda hired has jurisdiction, like, at my house. Or your house. Or someone’s house. Or a hotel. I don’t actually fucking care, can we just not be here right this minute?”

“Yeah, seconded,” says Margaret, fidgeting, and Nina pouts (actually _pouts_ , the CEO of their company, ladies, gentlemen and folks) but follows their lead. 

The adrenaline is starting to wear off for all of them, but Margaret sits ramrod-straight in the back seat as Zane drives them off and onto the 405. Nina curls into the opposite corner and almost immediately falls asleep, but before she does Zane hears her murmur: “We still need to talk, Madge.” 

When he finally relaxes enough to take his eyes off the road in front of them for a second, Margaret is holding Nina’s hand tightly between both of hers. She meets his look, and shakes her head minutely. 

Later, then.

*

They end up at Zane’s, because it’s the closest and also he knows exactly how much alcohol is there (lots) and how much he’s going to need (all of it). 

Zane is mixing himself a G&T in the kitchen, standing at the pass through window into the living room. Margaret is in the bathroom, cleaning up her face and the abrasions on her stomach. Nina is shotgunning her fifth beer on the couch. 

Margaret comes out into the kitchen, a white bandage on her midsection. She looks nervous. 

Zane decides to give them some privacy. He doesn’t really know what the fuck is going on, but trusts Margaret enough to assume she wouldn’t put them in any danger. (Or, at least, any _unreasonable_ danger. Probably.) He squeezes her shoulder.

“Chin up, kid. Guest rooms are down the hall.” Margaret gives him an unsteady smile as he takes his drink to bed. She takes a breath, squares her shoulders, and heads into the living room. 

“Hey, Madge,” says Nina. “You okay? Those cuts looked pretty gnarly.” 

“I-I’m fine.” 

Nina, perched on the couch, raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Um. Well. Here.” She crosses the room to where she left her backpack. “Might as well get this over with,” she mutters.

Margaret starts pulling documents out of her backpack and spreading them out across the coffee table. “Birth certificate. Passport. Bank accounts. Investments. Proof of your duly appointed position as CEO, signed by the board. The minutes of every board meeting Linda held in your stead.” She produces a thin USB stick. “Digital copies. Including the Architect’s files. Don’t put this in anything without telling me first; it will absolutely poison you and then blow up.” 

“And this,” Margaret hesitates, then places a spiral-bound notebook on top of the pile. “Medical records and-and my project files. This is everything you need to know about what we did. What I did.”

Nina slowly reaches for the notebook and flips through the first pages. She blanches. 

“You did all of this?” 

_For me?_ Nina intends to say next, but she looks up to see that Margaret has quietly started to cry. 

“You were gone. You were _gone_ , Nina, and I didn’t-I didn’t know what to _do_! I couldn’t-I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, but I-I missed you so much, and!” 

There is quite a lot, while Nina was locked away, that Margaret herself has had to keep locked away. All of it appears to be spilling out now.

Margaret has spent two years trying to get Nina back, all on her own. She has performed miracles, resurrected the dead, committed uncountable acts of corporate fraud, unspooled and rewound time itself. And after all of that, Margaret is coming undone by the idea, the very _possibility_ , that she might have let Nina down.

Nina looks from the stack of Margaret’s handiwork, to Margaret’s tear-stained face, and back again. And then, for the second time that day, she pulls her into a fierce hug. Balanced precariously, half on the couch and half on Nina’s lap, Margaret buries her face in Nina’s shoulder and _wails_. 

“Oh, oh, no. Oh, Meg, _no_. You did good, you did _so_ good, shh, shhhh, don’t cry.” Nina rests her chin on the crown of Margaret’s hair as she weeps in her arms, two years of loss and loneliness and pain, all coming out at once. 

Margaret’s notebook, hastily pushed aside, has fallen open to a page of handwritten notes. When Nina, still soothing a crying and hiccuping Margaret, glances down at it, the first line reads: _can’t save her heart_. 

It’s crossed out. The line below: _fuck that, did it anyway_. 

Nina tugs Margaret up so she can look her in the eyes. “Hey, hey,” she says, wiping the last of Margaret’s tears away, and holding her face in her hands, just to make sure Margaret gets the message. “You did _good_. Okay?”

Margaret sniffles, then nods. She reaches up and squeezes Nina’s wrist. “Okay.” 

“And you know what else?”

“What?”

“You and me and Mr. Accounting back there? We’re going to make a list. We’re going to fill that list with the names of every scum-fuck empty suit corporate hack responsible for all of this, and you and me? We’re going to make them wish they’d never been fucking _born_. We’re going to fire them into the goddamn sun from a cannon full of nails, Madge. _Rusted_ nails. Okay?”

Margaret smiles, and nods. “I’m with you. Always.” 

Gently, hesitantly, she leans in and rests her forehead against Nina’s.

“Welcome back.”


End file.
